


Seasons Shifting

by Caers



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 19:24:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caers/pseuds/Caers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Au; set in Ancient Greece</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seasons Shifting

John wakes in his bed, staring up at the plain ceiling, and desperately wanting a drink of water. He’s tired, his body feels like it’s been dragged on the field of battle without rest for days, but that’s something he left behind a few years ago. His shoulder pulls and twinges when he tries to roll on to his side.

The sun is shining bright through the window, and he wonders why his wife has let him sleep in so late. He has house calls to make, some of the children in the village are feeling poorly. He wants to see to them as soon as possible.

But he doesn’t get up, despite wanting to. He has no energy to draw on. He knows this feeling. This is how he felt when he was recovering from an infection in his shoulder after being shot with a particularly well placed arrow. The arrow that had sent him home, as it had turned out. He still has the broken pieces wrapped in linen, stowed in the trunk at the foot of the bed.

He tries to call for his wife, can only manage a weak croak. But it’s enough that someone comes rushing in, to his side. He blinks up at the old face, worn and weathered. Mary’s mother. A rather severe woman, but also a good person and a midwife. She feels his face, takes his hand and presses it to the side of her face, then leans down and listens to his chest. Her granddaughter, John’s niece, comes in with a pitcher of water and a basin.

“You’ll live,” Agatha says with a nod. “But only just.”

Live? John frowns. Agatha puts an arm behind his shoulders and helps him sit as the girl, Galene, touches a cup to his lips. He drinks the cold well water greedily, until Agatha waves the girl away and lowers him back down.

“You were ill,” Agatha explains once the girl has gone. She pours the water into the basin and wrings out a cloth, uses it to wipe over John’s face. “But the fever has gone, and you will recover, in time.”

Mary. Why was she not here? Why her mother? John has taught his wife much of what he knows about sickness and fever for when they have children. She would be just as capable as her mother. Ah, perhaps she was too tired. Too many days spent caring for him.

Agatha finishes wiping him down and sits on the edge of the bed. “You were very ill,” she says. “Four days ago you collapsed. We’ve been worried about your recovery.”

John licks his lips and lets his eyes fall closed. He just wants to see his wife right now, to see her golden hair in the sunlight, and feel her work-calloused fingers on his face. “Mary...” is all he can say, though.

There’s a long silence, then Agatha’s crooked fingers tighten around his hand in a brief squeeze. “Mary fell ill as well,” she says softly, and the way she says it...

John isn’t so ill that he can’t tell grief in a mother’s voice. He opens his eyes. “Where is she?” he forces out, his throat still raw and pained. “Mary!” he calls out.

“Hush, John,” Agatha says, more harsh than John has ever heard her. “She wasn’t as strong as you, and she died yesterday morning.”

No. John pulls his hand from Agatha’s hand and struggles to sit. “No,” he denies, shaking his head. But he can see it on Agatha’s face. Yes. Mary, oh gods. “I want to see her.”

Agatha nods, just once. “We have everything prepared, but we did want to wait until you woke before we performed the procession.”

Agatha is strong, despite her age and the disease that bends her bones. John makes use of that strength as she helps him, weak as a baby, from the bed and into an adjoining room. Mary is laid on the thin bed there, dressed simply in white, flowers strewn around her, around the room.

To hide the smell of decay, John thinks idly, unable to stop it. But she looks perfect, still. Her skin is oiled and her hair is arranged and she almost looks alive in the sun that falls on her. John pushes Agatha away and falls to his knees at the side of the bed and grabs Mary’s hand, still stained with dye from the clothes she had been making.

He doesn’t recall much, including leaving the room. He wakes back in his bed. Agatha is sat in a chair next to him, clothes folded neatly on her lap. She stands when she sees he’s awake and shakes out the clothing.

“They are not your finery,” she says, her voice matter of fact, and she raises her chin, daring John to speak against her. He may be recovering and grieving, but he’s not a fool. He keeps his silence. “I finished them. I felt that I should, and that it would be fitting that you wear them.”

The clothes Mary had been making him, John thinks, recognising the colours. A deep blue tunic, dark red trousers. She’d been so proud of them. So eager to show she could do this for him.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Get dressed,” Agatha says. “Call me if you need assistance.”

John smiles bitterly and sits up slowly. “I need your help,” he says before she can leave, and Agatha mirrors his humourless smile and bends to lend her aid.

*

The funeral procession passes in a blur. He remembers little of it with coherency, save for leaning on Agatha, who refuses any one else who steps forward to lend him aid. Slaughtering one of their animals next to her grave, the knife in his shaking hand, his hand that, after returning from war, had only ever been steady when it rested on his wife’s body.

He’s coming to hate waking in bed with no memory of going to it.

*

When he is able to leave his bed he spends his time praying to any of the gods who will listen, asking why they’ve taken his wife, begging for a sign that she is at peace. But he’s spent too long in war, too long in other lands, and he knows that if there are gods they don’t listen to the words of a single soldier and husband, and they don’t concern themselves with his humble life.

A part of him wonders if this is his punishment for his lack of faith. If Artemis herself shot the arrow that crippled him because he wasn’t attentive enough in his devotions to her. He can only hope that Mary is not punished in the afterlife, if there is indeed one, because he is not able to put his belief into something he has no proof of.

He doesn’t mark the passing days, but he does note when they become cooler, shifting seasons. He has no place here now, unable to draw a bow to hunt, unable to practice his craft as a healer, unable to help in the fields. He won’t speak to any others, even his old friends. He has nothing but acerbic words for any of them. Even Agatha rarely comes around now, his words deepening the lines of grief in her old face. He can’t help but see Mary in her eyes, and her presence is a harsh reminder of his pain.

He knows there are those who claim to speak with the dead, with the gods, who say they can see the future, and who can tell fortunes. One of them, surely, must hold the answers he seeks. If the gods truly are listening then one of these oracles must be able to whisper to them.

When he has the strength, long after the harvest is done, he gathers his few possessions, his bow and arrows, even though he can barely even string his bow, his dagger and sword, and he leaves the village without a farewell to anyone. He catches the first boat to the mainland, and he doesn’t look back.

*

He hears of a temple. A sacred place of truth. An oracle that will see no one. This is the seer he must find. But the temple, they tell him, is never to be reached. No one he speaks to knows of any person who has gone searching for it and who has found it. Most are simply not heard of again.  
But he follows rumours and tales anyway. They have brought him from his home in Myrina, they have taken him from Lemnos, and they have drawn him across the sea, through Eretreia.

He has prostrated himself at the feet of the great Delphic Oracle, and he has listened to the nonsensical babble spew forth from her red stained lips. But he has been a medic and a soldier for too long to not recognise when someone is intoxicated. She is no sybil, she is just another pawn of the priests. But it is the talk around the Pythia that he listens to, and he follows that talk to Athens.

The thread runs thin there, a frail, and fragile line. But he hears of the occasional traveller who comes this way seeking the shrine, seeking the words of truth, and he hears that they have always gone to Mycenae, and this is where he goes, as well.

After Mycenae there is no more. Perhaps because south lies Sparta, and they tolerate none from outside. And he has fought against them, and also fought at their side. He has no desire to enter into their lands.

So he petitions for access to the library at Mycenae, and once granted leave to enter he sits within and slowly reads through whatever he can find that may pertain to his quest. But his skills at reading have never been the best, and many of the texts are ancient and in languages he has never learned.

Time passes, through the winter and the summer until he can feel the chill once again creeping in to the air, and into his broken shoulder. It pains him even to hold a quill to write with, but this pain keeps his mind focused, reminds him daily of what it is he has come so far to find. Mary had never let the scarring or his uselessness deter her. She’d had no sympathy when he would sink in to his black moods. This pain defines him.

He finds the trace he has spent searching this library for. He knew that he would, or he would not have ever remained in Mycenae. A map so old that his fingers tremble slightly as he unrolls it. The fine parchment crackles, as if it is about to crumble, but it holds, and he looks down on it, and a smile spreads across his face. He doesn’t understand the words written on it, the unfamiliar characters of a language he has never learned, but the bodies of land are unmistakable, and only one location is marked out.

He wastes no time in copying it out, and it is a true representation. He has learned, in his service, that there is no place for misrepresentation on maps. That is what kills men who should have survived. He carefully rolls the scroll back and slides it into the leather tube, although he is sure no one will ask for it again, not soon anyway. And likely it will be beyond use by then. He wonders if he should make another copy and add that to the leather tube as well, but he refrains. He has a thought that if he finds this temple that few have heard of and where perhaps none have ever been then no one will ever find it again.  
He leaves Mycenae the next day and travels to Argos and books passage on the next ship heading for Crete. If the original map is true and what he searches for is on one of the smaller islands off the coast of Crete, the port of Cydonia is his best lead.

He takes the time to speak with the captain and the navigator on the passage, and he watches as they argue over the workings of their astrolabe; at least this is what he assumes it to be, because their device is so complex that it boggles his mind.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he says, and watches the navigator rotate dials and read the inscriptions.

“And you never will again,” the man says with a soft laugh. “It was a gift to us. Though I don’t know why.”

“Who would give such a handsome gift and not give an explanation also?” he asks with a slight frown. “It’s a gift of kings, that.”

“We were told that one day someone would come and ask us for the truth,” the captain says with a shrug. “And that when he does, we would take him to the home of the man who gave us this.”

“But that’s me!” John laughs with relief, and at the suddenness of his good fortune. And it bodes well, for he’s come seeking an oracle of truth, and it seems he is well expected. “I am searching for a temple, where they say that only those who seek the truth may come.”

But the captain and the navigator only laugh and dismiss him, and he walks away from them with a heavy heart. Night falls quickly, and the sea around them grows into a rage. They passed Kythera earlier in the day, and with luck they could turn the ship around and return to take shelter from the storm.

There is no time though, for within minutes the ship is being thrown about, and it is upended, and the last thing he thinks is that this is the price that is paid when a gift is taken and a promise is left unfulfilled.

*

He’s jolted into consciousness to throw up sea water and cough violently to rid his lungs of the same. He collapses back onto the sand when his body is finished expelling the water, and he can feel every single grain against his skin, like pinpricks of glass. He has a vague thought that he should try to move out of the sun so he doesn’t subject himself to exposure, or to any local animals, but he’s too tired and too ill, and all he manages is to curl his fingers into the sand before he passes out again.

He dreams of clinging to the ropes around the main mast, the storm having come on far too quickly for anyone to seek the shelter below deck. He isn’t so sure he’d want to be below, not with the way the waves are rocking them, battering at the ship. One wave rips him from the mast, drags him across the deck, throws him against the rails around the deck.

He clutches at them, desperately. He can swim, of course he can, but he knows that’s of no use in a storm like this. He was raised on an island, and though he was never one of the fishermen, he’s heard them talk of these sudden squalls.

His fingers are raw already, and they’re stiff and cold. There’s a momentary lull, and John blinks water from his eyes, and stares with dread out at the black waves, and he must be hallucinating, must have swallowed more water than he thought, because he can swear there are faces staring back at him, black eyes in pale faces with mouths open and screeching in the wind, arms stretched out to catch him. It takes him so off guard that when the waves hit again, this time from behind him, he’s swept out without a fight. He hits the water hard, and he has a moment to think _No, no I haven’t found the answer yet_ before he loses consciousness, imagining clawed fingers pulling at him.

The sun is burning overhead when he wakes with a start. His skin is tight and itchy and hot, and he coughs and tries to lever himself up to his knees but the stabbing pain in his shoulder takes him off guard and makes him cry out and collapse back to the sand when he puts any weight on it.

He spits out the last of whatever water had remained in his stomach, and it burns his lips. He pokes the tip of his tongue to his lips, hisses as he touches cracks. He rolls over on his back and sits up, holds his left arm close to his chest to immobilise it and minimise the pain the movement causes. His entire body aches, battered by the sea, and he stands slowly, his vision swimming as he draws himself upward. He staggers, but keeps his feet.

The beach around him is glaring white in the sun and there’s nothing on the beach from the wreck, no debris, no other people. The sky is clear and a brilliant blue. He turns back to the sea, perfect and serene now, and not populated by strange and horrific half human creatures.

He looks away from the sea, glad to be rid of it for now, and surveys the land past the sandline. There’s a stone path in the scrub, overgrown and broken, and he walks slowly over the sand toward it, making it to the path before having to stop for a moment to sit on a boulder to rest.

He can see further now, into a wide valley filled with broken buildings and ruins, gutted of all life, and his heart beats heavy in his chest. He doesn’t need the map to know that this is the village it had spoken of. A village now overgrown and desolate and gone, long gone, and the realisation brings a sense of bitterness and defeat, and he slumps.

Movement in the valley catches his eye. Just there, on the far edge of the ruins. Jerky movement that gives him a chill, unnatural and wrong. He flexes the fingers of his left hand, rolls his shoulder carefully to work out some of the tightness in case he has a need to defend himself. But the movement is gone now, and he blames it on the sun and the seawater.

He won’t let illusions stop him now. He’s come so far and he must at least go down into the village and look. Find the temple, find what may be left. There has to be more. Something, anything. If not, why the navigator and the captain? It cannot have been so long ago that they were instructed to bring someone, unless they spoke of a tale handed down to them along with the complex astrolabe. Perhaps there are records, if nothing else.

He rests for a little longer, his eyes going back to the spot where he’d seen that movement, assuring himself it was nothing but his imagination. He finds his strength after a while, and walks down the path and into the ruins. He knows it must be from the sickness caused by ingesting the sea water, the heat, his exhaustion, but shadows and movement catch his eyes and he can’t help but feel deeply unnerved and constantly observed as he wanders through the broken buildings.

He picks handfuls of berries to eat, ones he recognises at least. The ghosts in the corners of his vision never come to anything, for which he’s glad, as he’s lost his weapons to the sea, and he’d be little threat in his weakened state.

The sun is beginning its descent when John comes to what must have once been the temple. He wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt and his juice stained fingers on his trousers, and he climbs the steps to the collapsed entrance of the temple.

He frowns at the smell of something burning. Not incense, not oil, and not particularly unpleasant. From here he can see the faintest flickering of light inside, in between fallen pillars and broken stone, and it takes him a few minutes of searching to find a way through the rubble.

The entire antechamber at the front is mostly collapsed, and John can’t see the daylight through the rubble when he clears it and reaches the interior which is, to his surprise, remarkably intact. There are mounds of pillows and blankets about the open floor, torches mounted on the walls, though only a few are lit.  
And there is a man sat on a stone bench with his bare back to the entrance, the firepit at his feet casting his slender form almost into silhouette. He holds up his right hand, the light reflecting off the gauntlet covering it.

“They call you John,” he speaks up, his voice low and soft. But it carries, and it strikes John through the chest like lightning, stopping him only a dozen strides from this man.

He’s come so far, reached the temple, found the only true oracle, the one man left alive in this abandoned ruin, and John finds himself frozen.

“Yes,” is all John can say, the word wrenched from him without his permission. A temple of truth, he thinks. And only truth can be spoken here, and questions asked will always be given a truthful answer. From this closer vantage point he can clearly see the gauntlet on the Oracle’s hand, how it covers his thumb and first two fingers and his hand, the fingertips sharpened and shining where the rest of the metal is dull.

“You’ve come all this way, and yet you stand there so silent,” the Oracle says, and there’s some humour in his voice, John notes. The kind of humour where the other person is laughing at you, not with you.

John looks down at his feet. He had a reason for this, he had a question once. But he isn’t sure if he wants to know the answer now, if the answer will be of the same ilk as the granted wishes of the djinn he’s heard about. He looks up, his eyes catching on the dark hair that falls in curls at the nape of the Oracle’s neck.

The Oracle lowers his hand and John feels warmth rush through him again, and he gasps and staggers to the side. “Sit,” the Oracle allows, gesturing to the pillows to his side.

John hesitates, then finds one of the larger cushions and carefully lowers himself to sit on it. From here he can see the profile of this man, this seer, whatever he may be. The fire casts shadows in the severe planes of his face and he doesn’t look real, more like some fine and strange statue. He wears only a kilt of some dark fabric, no ornamentation save for the unusual gauntlet, and no sandals. John’s gaze lingers on the long toes, curling and uncurling at the edge of the firepit.

“You may ask as many questions as you like,” the Oracle says to John without taking his eyes from the fire, his voice flat and devoid of any emotion now, though a slight smile curves the corner of his lips. But it’s not a pleasant smile, John decides. Not one of joy.

“You know my name, but I don’t know what to call you,” John says almost immediately, surprised at his own words.

The Oracle closes his eyes and tilts his head down, still with that faint smile. Sadness, John thinks. There is so much sadness in the lines of that face, and he feels the urge to find some way to get rid of it.

“Sherlock,” the oracle says.

“I’ve never heard that name before.”

“There is much, I’d wager, that you haven’t heard before,” Sherlock says, but John doesn’t hear any malice in the words. He wishes he did. Anything but the blankness of that voice.

“Are you alone here?” John can’t imagine anything worse. Judging by the growth in the village the settlement had been abandoned for longer than his life, at the very least. To be all alone here for so long...

“Of sorts.” The smile slides from Sherlock’s lips and he turns his face to John and opens his eyes. In this dim light, and the shadows cast from the fire, John can’t see what colour they are, can only see inky blackness where his eyes should be. “Though I only see my eternal companions when people desecrate my home.”

“I’ll be careful not to annoy you then,” John mutters, and this makes Sherlock laugh, once, a short bark of laughter that makes John smile up at Sherlock.

“Those who meet the ones imprisoned on this island with me rarely make it off the beach,” Sherlock elaborates with a wave of his left hand. “The very presence of trespassers on this island offends me. I feel less for having even gazed upon their countenance.”

“Have you always lived here, then?” These are not the questions I came here to ask, John thinks. And if I can speak only the truth here, why is it that this is the truth I must seek?

“No.” A whispered word, but so full of pain that John’s breath catches because it echoes so close to what he feels. “Although when I came here it was so long ago that I cannot count the ages that have passed. And not once have I been allowed to leave.” Sherlock looks down at his hands, clenched in his lap. “It was my arrogance that brought me here, that brought my people to ruin. And so in this ruin I am forced to sit, and my great abilities are wasted to the aeons, until time sees fit to free me. But you did not come here to ask of my life, John of Myrina. You came here for the answer to your question.” He holds out his long fingered hand to John. “Would you like that answer?”

Tell me, just tell me that my wife rests in peace, John thinks. That if the gods truly do exist they have seen fit to let her be at peace. He presses his lips together, afraid to hear the answer.

No, he thinks, and he looks at Sherlock’s hand, then up at his face, and there’s light swirling in that blackness of his eyes. I’m not afraid. Because it does not matter. I loved her, and she is gone either to the aether of nothingness, or she is at peace, but she is not of this earthly realm any longer.

His journey has shown him more, and it has brought him peace of mind; it has brought him here, where none other has been granted leave to be, a place of truth, and he must either face the truth or perish here. John reaches out and places his hand in Sherlock’s, almost surprised to feel cool skin and not something more like stone. “I have my answer,” he says.

Sherlock tilts his head to the side and a smile softens his face, not sad now, but with something like peace in it. Around them the temple creaks. Wind gusts through, cold and sharp, and the fire blows out in its wake.

The room feels cold now, and John shivers. He stands, and pulls Sherlock to his feet. Sherlock is tall and thin, and he looks less forbidding without the light and shadow cast from the fire, less like a statue. “Ready to get out of here, then?” he asks.

He’s not going to leave Sherlock alone here, no matter any curse Sherlock may think he’s under. Lifetimes spent alone would have to suffice for whatever Sherlock had done. John’s taking him off this island or he’s staying here with him.

“Yes,” Sherlock says with intense feeling, and keeps his fingers curled around John’s hand.

* * *

They come here from a ruined island, a civilisation so advanced that the only thing capable of destroying it had been its own arrogance. Their boats, though mighty and proud, had been destroyed by towering waves crashing down on them as their land fell apart and toppled in to the sea, and beneath the waves.

And one of them, little more than a boy, had clung to the pieces of his ship, half held there by his brother because he would not let go of his satchel, his most precious things secured within.

Most of their people are lost in the catastrophe, but some of them wash up on the shore of an island, and they build their village small this time. Elegant, and beautiful, in time, but small. There aren’t enough to maintain a population, and the surrounding cultures on the mainlands are little more than tribes of barbarians huddled around campfires.

The boy hides in craggy lands beyond the village, alone except for his brother, the only one who knows what it was that truly brought their island low.

“You never did know when to listen,” he tells the boy, who is carefully drying out the pages of his book. He bends down to pick up the strange half gauntlet on the grass, but his brother bats his hand away.

“It’s mine,” he says with a glare. “I made it. I will keep it.”

“Sherlock, you cannot have this power. You have destroyed our people with your careless use of it.”

“You never liked them anyway,” Sherlock says dismissively, and slips the gauntlet onto his hand; the metal slides around his small hand like liquid, reforming to fit him. “I wouldn’t have let you die, Mycroft. And I never intended to harm anyone, but they were too stupid to listen to me, to give me the help I needed. No one would have died if they’d just helped me!” He clenches his unadorned hand and stares into the fire.

“No one would have died if you had simply obeyed,” Mycroft points out. “But it’s been done now, and none of the others know of what you have done. Come back to the village.”

“No,” Sherlock refuses, and holds out his hand to the fire. The metal shines and sparks and the fire leaps high into the air, then dies down. “Not until I know how to control this.”

Mycroft sighs heavily and nods. “I’ll return in a few days with more food,” he says. “Be careful, Sherlock.”

But Sherlock is lost in the intricacies of the fire now, flicking his fingers to make a tendril leap or sparks shower. Mycroft turns and walks back to the village.

*

Sherlock leads the way out of the temple, through a passage beneath the building, that is littered with debris and heavy with dust. It is there that John sees the power that Sherlock commands. When they come to collapsed walls and ceilings, Sherlock has only to hold out his gauntleted hand and the wreckage rights itself, moves back into position as if it had never been anywhere else. It terrifies John, but it also thrills him, and he wonders how anyone with such power could be imprisoned anywhere.

They emerge in a cave that stretches around them, and John stares for a long moment at the strange beauty of the moss that glows in the darkness, and the small lake that reflects the light back.

Sherlock holds up his hand and around the cave torches flare into life, and after the near-pitch blackness of the long tunnel, John has to squeeze his eyes shut, opening them slowly to adjust.

“You could have warned me,” he says to Sherlock, but he’s too busy trying to take in everything around him to really be irritated. Long tables cluttered with so many devices, books piled everywhere, scrolls in careful pyramids that look like they’ve merged into one whole.

“Do not touch anything,” Sherlock cautions, and he’s watching John, his eyes gone solid black again, his metal-covered fingers twitching.

John feels a chill go up his spine as the gauntlet seems to shift around Sherlock’s hand, though he knows that metal cannot do that, and it must be a trick of the light. That it’s some kind of device that enables Sherlock to use whatever power he has is obvious, but John doesn’t like it.

“How do you expect to take all of this with you?” John asks, and goes to the nearest table, trying to put thoughts of the gauntlet out of his mind. The table is littered with scraps and bits and pieces of metal, some of the half-put together parts reminding him of the astrolabe he’d seen in the hands of the doomed ship he’d taken to come here.

“Take it?” Sherlock frowns at John, and in the flickering torchlight he looks so foreign to John. “I have no intention of taking any of this. I need none of it. It was all to pass my time whilst I waited for you.”

“Waited for me?” John looks up from the table and half smiles. No one has ever waited for him. There’s nothing different about him that sets him apart from anyone else. “Right.”

Sherlock just stares at him in silence and it unnerves John. He clears his throat and wanders over to another table. It is beyond him to make sense of the complex diagrams on the scrolls that are rolled out and weighted down, the loose papers scattered across the stone surface. But he recognises the human body on one and he leans closer, unable to read the notations that obviously label all the parts of the body, inside and out, laid clear on the sketches. He’s studied medicine, spent years practicing it in the army in addition to being a skilled archer, but this, all of this, seems so very above what he understands.

“Take those, if you like,” Sherlock allows, and John starts at how close Sherlock is. “I’ll teach you what they say.”

John hesitates before he takes all the papers he can find that relate to the human body, half afraid they will crumble in his hands. They don’t, and he glances about for something to carry them in.

He can feel Sherlock step away; the man’s like a fire, putting out heat that John can feel even with space between them. Sherlock returns with a satchel, and John considers that maybe Sherlock can read minds, which isn’t something that John would discount at this point, not after everything he’s seen today.

He puts the papers into the satchel and slings it over his body crosswise, drapes the blanket he’d taken from the temple through the straps, and looks over each table for anything else of interest. But they’re all sketches and strange devices he can hardly comprehend and none of them seem fully finished so he leaves them where they are.

“If you’re done?” Sherlock says when John looks up from the last table. He looks half amused at John’s curiosity, half impatient to be gone from this place. John can understand that. If he’d been held somewhere against his will for so long he’d want to leave it as soon as possible.

“I’m done,” John says, and looks over his shoulder one last time at the cave before it falls into darkness, the torches sputtering out. No one will ever come here again, he thinks to himself. No one will ever know the strange things conceived here, half formed from the mind of this strange man. He glances at Sherlock’s back, pale in the faint glow from the lichen and moss. If he is even a man, he amends, and follows him again.

They walk through another tunnel and come out into a smaller, empty cave that leads out onto the surface of the island. John is startled by a loud rumble and crash behind them, and the ground shakes beneath their feet. A cloud of dust from the tunnel rushes out of the cave with such force that it nearly knocks him over and John staggers forward into Sherlock, almost knocking him over when his hands flatten against Sherlock’s chest. He stands there, Sherlock’s hands curled around his elbows to steady him, and stares up at Sherlock’s eyes; their colour shifts as tendrils of black flicker around them and retreat into the corners of his eyes and then are gone. John pulls away quickly, then turns and looks back, everything from the back of the cave and beyond collapsed and hidden forever.

“Those things are not for men,” Sherlock says simply and he isn’t looking at the cave now, John notes. He’s studying John, eyes narrowed and never still, and John wonders just what it is Sherlock is looking at, or looking for. “They never were, and I won’t let them be used by idiots who have no concept of the forces they wield.” John doesn’t miss the bitterness lacing those words.

“Well, you’re one of those men, Oracle or not,” John reminds him, even if he isn’t sure about that.

Sherlock huffs a soft laugh. “If you say so,” he says under his breath, but John hears him anyway and frowns at the comment. It’s too close to his own thoughts, and not a subject he feels that comfortable broaching, so he lets it pass.

*

Often, Sherlock doesn’t see Mycroft for months, but there is always food left for him when he is running low. He finds a cave in the hills, the mouth of it small, the initial interior small, narrowing out at the back to a long tunnel that opens into a large cave with a small pool of fresh water. He sets up a laboratory in this back area, and spends some time learning how to manipulate the rock and earth so he can create a chimney for ventilation.

But he doesn’t spend much time in the cave, not at first. He explores the island, and finds that the best way to learn how to use the abilities the gauntlet grants him is to experience the elements first hand. He swims in the sea around the island and learns how the water acts; he stands in the wind and feels the way it blows around him, around everything; he feels the shift in air pressure that signals rain, and storm, and sun, and he catalogues it all in his mind.

He returns to his cave, his home, after days spent wandering the island, and finds Mycroft sat on the boulder at the mouth of the cave, the basket of food he usually leaves resting on the grass next to his feet. Sherlock stops a few feet from him and frowns slightly. Mycroft doesn’t look well. He’s thin and drawn, and Sherlock’s fingers in the gauntlet twitch, and he can see the sickness in Mycroft, much in the way he can see the patterns of the wind swirling around trees.

“You’re ill,” he says to Mycroft.

“Yes,” Mycroft answers simply. “I wanted to make sure I saw you, Sherlock. We have just one doctor left in the village, and she cannot say what this illness is, but she is certain I do not have long to live.”

“But it hasn’t been that long since I saw you last,” Sherlock says with some confusion. He sits on the grass and tilts his head to the side, and he stares into Mycroft, trying to see what the illness is. He sees the way it has corrupted his brother’s internal organs, eating away at them.

“Sherlock, it’s been over a year,” Mycroft says softly. “And you haven’t aged at all. You should have grown a little, at least. But you are still the boy you were when we first arrived here. Perhaps you shall remain a boy forever.”

“I don’t feel like a boy,” Sherlock says. And has it been so long? He has no concept of how much time has passed. It has all been a blur of learning. “I can see the sickness in you,” he finally says after a prolonged silence. “Maybe there is something I can do. It can’t be difficult. I must study the way it travels in your blood, but I learn quickly. Perhaps I can slow it, or even cure it.”

Mycroft narrows his eyes at Sherlock. “And your device, it can grant you such an ability?”

“I’ve been practicing. It lets me see the way energy moves around us, the differences in each weather pattern, and I’ve learned to manipulate them with a great degree of precision. I can see the sickness in you in the same way I can see how a current of warm or cold water moves through the sea. I’ve never looked at a person with this sight before. I’d like to try, Mycroft.”

“You never try to do anything,” Mycroft sighs. “You do it, or you do not.”

“Then let me do it, Mycroft. You’re dying anyway. What is the harm?”

“I do not wish to die sooner, Sherlock.”

Sherlock just sits there with his eyes on his brother, and now that he’s looked at Mycroft with this sight he can’t withdraw it, can’t see him in any other way. And he wishes now that he had never looked at him in this way.

“Yes, very well,” Mycroft allows.

Sherlock springs up and moves to Mycroft’s side then, and reaches out with his bare hand, places it on Mycroft’s cheek. The connection causes information to explode into his mind. He feels the illness in his own veins, in his body, he sees flashes of a life lived, Mycroft old and withered in their now-destroyed home, old and alone in the last vestiges of the village here, everyone else but Sherlock long dead, and he sees silence and darkness. He sees the possibilities of Mycroft’s future, Sherlock realises with a start, and this gives him some hope that he may succeed in curing this.

So he closes his eyes and he lets everything flow through him. He doesn’t understand the workings of the body in the way that he is coming to understand the workings of nature, but he lets his own body tell him how a healthy body should be functioning, and he compares that to how Mycroft’s body is malfunctioning. He raises the gauntlet and rests that hand on Mycroft’s head, and he starts to manipulate his brother’s body at the most basic level, eradicating the disease within him, making his immune system fight, making it work like Sherlock’s works. When he’s satisfied he lowers both hands and opens his eyes.

Mycroft is staring at him with wide eyes, and he’s flushed, shaking.

“How do you feel?” Sherlock asks.

“I...” Mycroft raises a hand and stares at it. “The pain is gone,” he says. “My breathing isn’t laboured.” But then Sherlock sees his mistake a moment before Mycroft doubles over in pain, clutching his midsection.

“No,” Sherlock whispers, and he wants to touch Mycroft, but he’s terrified of doing more damage. He’s built up Mycroft’s immune system, his body, to imitate the only example Sherlock had to draw on, but Sherlock didn’t take into account how his body has been changed by the gauntlet, and by the energy he manipulates. Mycroft’s body is trying to draw on that energy, but his body has no way to gather it.

Sherlock pulls off the gauntlet and grabs Mycroft’s hand, tries to put it on him. But it simply falls off, inert. “You have to wear this or you’ll die,” he says to Mycroft, laying him out on the grass. “Why won’t it take to you?”

“Sherlock, stop,” Mycroft wheezes, grabbing Sherlock’s arm. “Too late.”

“It isn’t. I can fix this. I made this happen, I can, I can fix it,” Sherlock insists, and puts the gauntlet back on. He feels a moment of hate for the thing, how it wraps itself so easily around his hand, and how it refuses to work for Mycroft. But he has no other example to work from, doesn’t know how the human body should look when in proper working order.

“No, leave it,” Mycroft says, his hand squeezing Sherlock’s arm painfully tight as another wave of pain hits him.

Sherlock takes Mycroft’s hand, and he can feel the pain now, how horrific it is, and it knocks Sherlock over so he’s laying at Mycroft’s side, clutching his hand.

This I can do for him, at least, Sherlock thinks, and he forces himself to move, to press the gauntlet to Mycroft’s skin. He can see what he’s done, the complete botch he’s made of this, how he’s killed his brother in seconds, taken from him the last few months of his life. And no, he can’t change it. But he can make the pain go away. He finds the place in Mycroft’s mind that recognises the pain, and he shuts it off. The fire along his own nerves vanishes, and Mycroft relaxes as well.

“You don’t have much longer,” Sherlock says, and lies on the grass next to Mycroft, still clutching his hand.

“I didn’t before,” Mycroft says, and Sherlock can’t hear any resentment in his voice. “Don’t blame yourself for this, Sherlock.”

“But I’ve killed you. I am to blame.”

“I was going to die anyway. I’m happy to do it without pain, and with you near.”

Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut, trying to keep back his tears. He can still see faint flashes of the future, of Mycroft’s futures that would never be. A wife, once, children, grandchildren. “What will I do when you are gone?” he asks.

“I suppose you’ll learn to cope, somehow,” Mycroft says, and his voice is soft now, softer than it ever has been, and weak. “As we must all do. Shh. Don’t be sad.”

“Even as you die, you cannot stop trying to take care of me,” Sherlock says, but it’s with grief and not the malice he used to feel. “I’m so sorry, Mycroft. For everything.”

But there isn’t any answer. Sherlock feels the moment Mycroft dies, feels that last flicker of energy as his body tries once more to fight, and burns itself out. But he lies there next to him, holding his hand, long after the sun sets.

He uses the gauntlet to dig a deep grave, and he buries Mycroft in it and covers him. Then he takes off the gauntlet and lays it on a table in his workshop, and leaves it there when he packs up his things and heads toward the village.

*

The sun is high and bright as they walk, crossing over fields and hills, and Sherlock doesn’t stop. The sky clouds over and it starts to rain, a light drizzle at first but quickly getting heavier. John is tired, and he’s hungry, and his body is telling him to stop or it will stop him. He spares a passing thought for his days in the military, when he could go days without sleep. But that was before his shoulder and his long illness. He’s not that soldier anymore.

“I could stop the rain,” Sherlock offers suddenly, speaking for the first time since they left the cave. “Or at the very least shift it to another part of the island.”

“No, let’s just rest,” John says, hating how weak he is these days. The illness took more from him than his wife; it took his vigour, and he loathes the loss of that as well. “I’m exhausted and I’m starving. My ship did just wreck not that long ago, and I’ve lost all my supplies.”

“Yes, I am aware,” Sherlock says, and leads John to a rocky overhang. Not quite a cave, but it provides them with adequate shelter, the wind driving the rain against the hill that blocks the worst of it. “Who do you think caused the storm?” he adds.

John stops looking around for anything to use for a fire and straightens and stares at Sherlock. “You wrecked my ship?” he asks with disbelief.

“The compass that was being used on the ship was one I had created. I maintain a connection to the things I create. They are a part of me.” He presses his lips together in thought and the action makes him look so human, John thinks, and again he wonders just what it was that forced Sherlock to stay here for so long, alone, and what that type of imprisonment will have done to him. “I don’t know how to explain it, you have no idea of the concepts behind the science of it. But it allowed me to hear your conversation with the captain. I knew then that you were the one I’d been waiting for, and that they had failed to live up to the terms that come with using my compass.”

“All the other people on that ship---” John stands in the rain, just beyond the cover, gaping at Sherlock.

“What of them? So they did not have a chance to live out their pathetic, miserable lives, inflicting their stupidity on other people in other lands,” Sherlock says dismissively, that flash of humanity gone now. “Don’t pretend you care about them, John. I can tell that you don’t.”

“You have a lot to learn about people,” John snaps and goes to sit at the back of the overhang.

“I did have them rescue you,” Sherlock points out, his voice pitched low, and John looks over to him, scowling. “Your people call them mermaids, I believe. Although the race really has no name for itself.”

“Wait, those creatures I thought I saw...” John trails off with a shudder, feeling the strong and thin hands closing around his arms, dragging him up to the air.

“Creatures only in the way that you and I are also,” Sherlock corrects. “One day I may tell you about them.” He gathers a few bits of tinder together and flicks the fingers of his right hand, the metal sparking. The tinder flares up with fire, strong and bright and warm, and John can’t help but grudgingly move closer to it, unnatural though it may be.

“I suppose you hunt with that as well?” he asks Sherlock after several minutes of silence.

“I have no need to eat when I am wearing it,” Sherlock answers. He’s been sitting next to the fire, staring into it, his features blank and unreadable. “It draws sustenance from the energy around me.” He looks toward the field beyond, at the rabbit sat just beyond the overhang. It lopes closer, then lays down and heaves a few breaths before stilling. “Your meal awaits you,” he says.

John just stares for a moment at Sherlock, then rubs his face. “I’m too hungry to even care,” he finally says. “But unless you have a knife on you it’s not going to be easy to prepare it.”

Sherlock sighs heavily, goes to the rabbit and crouches over it. The tips of his gauntlet, it seems, are very sharp. They slice through the fur easily, and Sherlock guts and skins the animal quickly, then washes it out in the heavy rain before bringing it back and dropping it in John’s lap.

John pulls a face but he lays the rabbit on the fire, watching it carefully as it cooks. It doesn’t burn, he notices, and Sherlock is watching the fire intensely. He offers some to Sherlock when it’s ready to eat but it’s refused so he eats the whole thing, then cups his hands and extends them out into the rain, gathering enough to drink down.

He’s exhausted by this point and all his attempts at trying to talk to Sherlock have been met with silence; so he lays out the blanket and stretches on the floor and tries to sleep.

He wakes slowly to the feeling of something moving lightly over the skin of his back.

He twitches his muscles almost instinctively, trying to dislodge whichever insect has been attracted by the warmth of this body. The tickling feeling persists and the pressure increases instead of vanishing, and he hears a low hum.

“Sherlock?” he mumbles, still half caught in his dreams. Strange dreams that are fading even as he tries to think of them, filled with black eyes and rushing waves and Sherlock’s pale back and dark curls lit by flickering light.

The touch wanders up his back - John can tell it’s Sherlock’s fingertips now and that sends a shiver through him - and then a warm palm is placed over his damaged shoulder. “I could take care of this for you.”

John turns over onto his back, though he’s strangely loathe to break the touch. He looks up at Sherlock, stretched out next to him, head supported on the gauntleted hand. “What do you mean?”

“Your shoulder. I could fix it.” Sherlock sounds reluctant as he repeats himself. As if he wishes he can take back his words now that he’s said them. But he doesn’t, though John can see the reluctance in Sherlock’s eyes. Blue eyes, today. Not that shifting colour of the day before.

John glances at the gauntlet and this time his shudder is one of repulsion. “With that?”

Sherlock moves into a sitting position and holds out the hand sheathed in the gauntlet. He moves his fingers slowly, the metal glinting red in the early morning sun. It looks molten again, unreal somehow. It looks alive, the way it slides around his hand. John has seen many things in his life - during his time as a soldier and during his travels - but never anything like this.

John reaches out and lightly touches the sharp, claw-like tip of one finger. “What is it?” he asks.

“A gift.” Sherlock shrugs. “A curse.”

“And you made it.” What kind of mind could make something like this? Something that could control the elements, make an animal lay down and die. Heal his shoulder. “Can you take it off?”  
Sherlock looks down at his gloved hand. “I’m not sure. It’s been a long time. Nothing feels right when I take it off. Things are, less.”

John closes his hand around the gauntlet. It feels strangely cold to his touch and John wonders for a moment how Sherlock can stand having this on his skin all the time. Then he thinks about the time when he, himself, had been wearing metal on a daily basis. In time it warmed to your skin until it felt like a part of you; you just got used to it.

“I want to see your hand,” John says, his voice holding no room for argument from Sherlock. “Both of your hands.”

“What about your shoulder?” Sherlock asks, curling his fingers so the points of the two covered fingers rest against John’s fingers.

John shrugs. He can see the reluctance in Sherlock’s face, how he’s stalling in case John lets it go. “It’s part of who I am,” John states.

“But it hurts you.” Sherlock’s voice is confused, as if he can’t understand why John would refuse his help.

“Yes. Sometimes.” It’s hard to explain, but John can’t imagine a life without the pain. Not anymore. It reminds him of what he has lost and what he’s gained. It reminds him that he is still alive.

Sherlock seems to read the answer in John’s face. Or maybe he really can read John’s mind - in the end it doesn’t matter, John decides. Sherlock is who he is, and John knows, in a flash of insight, that he’ll have to learn to accept Sherlock as he is or walk away. And John is not going to walk away. Sherlock has been alone for so long, of course he isn’t going to relate to anyone in a way that John might find acceptable.

Sherlock smiles, a real smile that makes him look younger. “You’re a strange man, John.”

“So are you,” John says, and can’t help but return the smile. His acceptance releases the tension in the air, and he feels something in his chest loosen. “Take it off?” he requests.

Sherlock looks back at the gauntlet, at John’s hand wrapped around it. A flicker of emotion passes over his face. Reluctance, John thinks and closes his fingers tighter around the unnatural glove.

“Do it for me,” John pushes. He slowly pulls the metal off Sherlock’s hand, half expecting to see the flesh beneath disfigured, rotten or shrunken like he’s seen in cripples who had lost the use of their limbs. But the hand is healthy, just like Sherlock’s other hand, if a little pale.

Sherlock holds up his hand and moves his fingers like he’s doing it for the first time, watching the muscles move under the skin with something akin to fascination. John drops the gauntlet to the floor, not wanting to touch it any longer than necessary, and brushes his hand over his tunic. The thing is creepy, and the less he has to deal with it the better.

Sherlock reaches out and touches his fingertips to John’s cheek, tracing the line of his jaw - eliciting a faint rasping sound against John’s stubble - letting them rest lightly over John’s lips. “Everything feels so different,” Sherlock says softly, more to himself than to John.

“It feels normal. Real,” John replies with a faint smile, and Sherlock traces the upturned corners of his mouth, imprinting the shape of the smile on his fingertips.

“Just because you don’t approve of my glove doesn’t make what I experience through it unreal,” Sherlock chides, but without heat. He’s too busy dragging his fingers down John’s neck, cataloging the feel of damp skin and stubble, pausing on the pulse of blood in his veins.

“Unfiltered, then,” John amends, and Sherlock meets his eyes and nods his acceptance of the term.

“It’s been so long,” Sherlock says, letting his gaze drop back down to follow the path of his fingers as they push aside John’s shirt and run along his collarbone.

John doesn’t know if that means the time that has passed since Sherlock has last removed the gauntlet, since he’s touched someone without it, or touched someone at all, or something else. It doesn’t matter, not so much. It’s obvious Sherlock is starved for contact with another person, and John can give him that, at least, can ground him in reality, and show him that the world, or at least another body, can be just as good without whatever it is that the gauntlet does.

He reaches up, slowly so he doesn’t startle Sherlock, and slides a hand into his hair, twists his fingers in the curls, and leans forward enough to rest his forehead against Sherlock’s. “Whatever you want,” he says, and presses a kiss to Sherlock’s mouth.

“I waited so long for you,” Sherlock says, his voice low and almost harsh. He knocks John’s hands away and presses him back onto the blanket they had been sharing through the night.

John can feel Sherlock’s breath ghosting over his face, too close to look into his eyes anymore, and he only has a moment to process what’s happening before he can feel Sherlock’s lips on his own, demanding all of his attention.

John wakes a few hours later, the midday sun turning the world into a haze of heat, though they are somewhat protected under their shadowy overhang . Sherlock is sitting a little apart, just outside the shadow, with his back to John, absorbed in something.

Without moving - in order to not disturb Sherlock - John looks around for the gauntlet. It isn’t where he’d dropped it earlier. John wishes he could kick the thing into some deep hole from where it could never return.

Sherlock moves, lifting his hands and angling his body more towards the light. John can see the gauntlet in his hands, and he isn’t wearing it, but he is holding it up into the light with both hands, turning the metal over and over, examining every detail as if he is seeing it for the first time.

Don’t! John wants to shout. He wants to jump up and rip the thing out of Sherlock’s hands. But he doesn’t. He lays there and watches as sun’s light seems to sink into the metal, leaving it just as dull as it had looked when John had first seen it in the temple. John remembers how cold it had been to his touch, and he wonders if it would absorb the sun’s heat as well, and not give any back.

He can see Sherlock’s profile and the expression on his face frightens John. There’s a voracity to Sherlock’s features that makes John believe what Sherlock had told him of his eternal companions, and how they would kill anyone crazy enough to set foot on this island. Not for the first time, John asks himself why he’s so different.

John wants to say something to break the spell the gauntlet seems to have over Sherlock, but he feels himself unable to even breathe. He watches as Sherlock holds up the gauntlet and slips his hand into it in one fluid, well-practiced motion. Sherlock’s lips part and his face relaxes, his eyes fluttering shut.

And then, as if he suddenly remembers John’s presence, Sherlock turns around and looks at John, smiling thinly.

John smiles back. He’s known from the start that it won’t be easy, but it’s all he has left, and he’s not going to give up on it.


End file.
